A Smile is a Light on Your Face to Let Someone Know that You are Home

My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we are the first owners. God above has appointed us with manifest destiny, which means the United States has a divinely mandated obligation to expand across North American to the Pacific and overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions, on which we will build our houses and businesses, and here we will remain. I remember with technicolor clarity when our first child was born—April 22, 1990—a blazing-hot Southern California night. It has been so hot that I had taken my round little wife to the ocean—Huntington Beach, to be exact—to cool off. There I hollowed out a place in the sand for her tummy, and we stretched out under the Sun while the cool breezes of the Mar Pacifica refreshed us, as we both unwittingly began to sunburn. It was midafternoon when we headed back to the heat and smog of Beverly Hills, so we rolled back the sunroof of our burgundy 1989 BMW 735i and foolishly baked some more. We soon were red as tomatoes. After dinner, as we lay smarting on the hot sheets of our bed, labor began, and that is about all we remember of our sunburns. My wife was occupied with another kind of pain, and I was so excited I forgot about mine. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

That night brought one of the greatest events of our lives—for God gave us our firstborn, a handsome little boy we named Brice. I remember everything, even the color of the hospital walls. It seems like only yesterday. Another event has lodged in my mind with similar vividness. Another event has lodged in my mind with similar vividness. 23 July 2017, in another hospital in far-off Canada, my son Brice had his firstborn, a beautiful little boy, William, and he held him with the same rapture. Both experiences were profoundly supernatural, for I saw God’s creation: blood, Earth, water, wind and fire. Though just a speck on time’s continuum, I felt a sacred solidarity with the past and the present. I also felt grace, the unhindered flow of God’s goodness to me and my family. Today, as a grandfather of six (with promises of more to come), it is increasingly apparent that my most treasured possessions, next to life in Christ, are the members of my family. I share the universal reflex that if a fire occurred, after getting the kids out, I would go back for the photographs, the scrapbooks, the birthday cards and notes. Someday, when all is gone, when I can no longer see or hear or talk—indeed, when I may no longer know their names—the faces of my loved ones will be on my soul. For a conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

At mid-life I am finding increasing satisfaction in my family and in their families. All my children are serious Christians and want to make their lives count for Christ. I say this humbly, because parents often take too much blame for their children’s problems and too much credit when they turn out well. I realize that my children are what they are by the grace of God and that for me and them the road has not ended. I have mutually fulfilling relationships with all my children. They are independent of me, but they desire my company and counsel. We have mutual respect. They call me, and I call them, and we all live for the holidays when we can be together. I have shared all this because, though I have not been a perfect father, I have learned some things along the way which I must pass along, man to man, to those of you in the midst or at the beginning of fathering. Men, the mere fact of fatherhood has endowed you with terrifying power in the lives of your sons and daughters, because they have an innate, God-given passion for you. I went through my son’s journal and read a letter he wrote. “From time to time I have felt for my father a longing to have his acceptance. It has bewildered me, even thrown me into depression. It is mysterious to me exactly why his approval mattered so much. I have seen this longing in other men—and seen it now in my own sons, their longing for me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

“I think that I have glimpsed it once or twice in my father’s feelings about his father. Perhaps it is some urge of Telemachus, the residual infant in the man still wistful for the father’s heroic protection. One seeks to return not to the womb…but to a different thing, a father’s sponsorship in the World. A boy wants the aura and armament of his father. It is a deep yearning, but sometimes a little sad—a common enough masculine trait that is also vaguely unmanly. What surprises me is how angry a man becomes sometimes in the grip of what is, in essence, an unrequited need of approval.” Our sons naturally want us! Perhaps, men, you have experiences something like this. You have just finished a run, and you are sitting on the porch sweating like a pig and smelling like one, and your son, or perhaps a little neighbor boy, sits down next to you, leans against you, and says, “You smell good.” This is the primal longing for one’s father. And our daughters’ hearts are naturally turned toward ours with parallel longing. The terrible fact is, we can either grace our children, or damn them with unrequited wounds which never seem to heal. Our society is awash with millions of daughters pathetically seeking the affection their fathers never gave them—and some of these daughters are at the sunset of their lives. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

In the extreme, there are myriads of sons who were denied a healthy relationship with their father and are now spending their lives confused about their gender identity and gender role. Men, as fathers you have such power! You will have this terrible power even father your death, like it or not—in your attitude toward authority, in your regard for God and the Church. What terrifying responsibilities! This is truly the power of life and death. For these reasons we live in a time of great social crisis. Whole segments of our society are bereft of male leadership. At the other end of the scale, there are strong men who give their best leadership to the marketplace, but utterly fail at home. We are the men! And if God’s purpose does not happen with the son of the Church, it will not happen. Men, there are few places where sanctified sweat will show greater dividends than in fathering. If you are willing to work at it, you can be a good father. If you are willing to sweat, you will see abundant blessing. Helpfully, God’s Word provides us with an outline for a fatherly workout—in one pungent sentence: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord,” reports Ephesians 6.4. This outline is easiest remembered as a “do not” and a “do.” The “do not” is: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children”; the “do” is “instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The “do not” is perfectly clear, because it literally means, “do not provoke your children to anger so they begin to seethe with resentment and irritation.” The New English Bible captures the idea very well: “You fathers, again, must not goad your children to resentment.” The directness and simplicity of this “do not” invites us to do some honest thinking about the ways we goad our children to exasperation. It is hardly surprising that we are devoting more and more attention to the problem of aggression these days. We have experienced wars in the past; we are experiencing them in the present; and we fear the atomic war for which all the major powers of the World are arming themselves. At the same time people feel powerless to change this state of affairs. They see that their governments, which appear to have applied all their wisdom and brought all their goodwill to the to the issue, have not yet been able even to slow down or stabilize the arms race. So it is quite understandable that people are eager, on the one hand, to know where aggression really comes from but, on the other, are also receptive to theories that say aggression is part of human nature, not something that humans creates themselves or that their social institutions inevitably produce. Aggression is constantly and spontaneously being created in the human brain, it may be a legacy from ancestors, and it may increase more and more, assuming larger and larger proportions, if there is no release for it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

If there is due cause, it will be expressed. However, if the provocations are very weak or are missing altogether, then the accumulated aggression will eventually explode. People cannot help behaving aggressively after a certain period, because they have gathered so much aggressive energy inside them that it has to be released. We might call this a “hydraulic” theory. The greater the pressure becomes, the greater the likelihood is that the water or steam will burst out f its container. Every six months, my aunt in Vienna would hire a new maid. When the maid first arrived, my aunt was always utterly delighted and full of great expectations. However, after a week or two her enthusiasm began to wane. Disenchantment soon gave way to criticism and dissatisfaction, and finally, after about six months, she was so furious with the maid that she fired her. My aunt went through this cycle more or less regularly every six months, and this shows how aggression gradually builds up until, at a certain point, it has to vent itself. Now that may be how things look from the outside, but if we understand a little more about people than most do, then we know how inadequate this explanation may seem. A psychoanalyst—and not only a psychoanalyst but almost anyone with a little light into human nature—will assume that my aunt is a narcissistic, exploitive woman who would like to buy not just eight hours of work a day when she hires a maid but love, loyalty, devotion, amiability, and fifteen hours of work a day. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

She greets every new maid with those same expectations and is no doubt quite nice and charming to her, because she assumes that at last she has found the right one. However, once she takes a closer look she finds that the maid will not measure up to her expectations at all. She becomes more and more disappointed and angry and finally fires the maid, hoping that the next one will prove to be the right one. Since she probably has very little to do, the search for the perfect maid provides some drama in her life and gives her something to talk about. It is probably the main focus of her conversations with her friends. None of her behavior has anything to do with accumulated aggression; it is instead the product of a very specific character structure. And I am sure that at least the older people among you know any number of individuals who—whether there happen to be maids any more or not—would behave similarly in that kind of situation. The theory of innate aggression, which I cannot go into in detail here, bears a certain relationship to the old theory of death wish. It was Dr. Freud’s assumption from the 1920s on that there were two basic drives in all people, in all cells, in any living substance: a will to live and a will to die. And the will to die—or, more exactly, this wish for death—could express itself in one of two ways. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

If it was turned outward, the death wish is manifested itself as destructiveness; if turned inward, it was a self-destructive force that led to illness, suicide, or, if merged with impulses for pleasures of the flesh, masochism. The death wish, the theory holds, is innate. It is not affected by circumstances; it is not called into being by external forces. Humans have only two choices: Either one can turn one’s wish for death and destruction against oneself, or one can turn it against others. And that leaves one faced with a tragic dilemma indeed. However, in fact the scientists who have concerned themselves with this problem have been able to turn up very little evidence over the years to support the theory. The generally accepted view among psychologist today is that aggression is conditioned by the social environment or that it is “channeled” by specific stimuli, by the culture—in short, by any number of factors. However, the theory of aggression gained great popularity in the general public. It deluded us into thinking there was nothing we could do after all. It provided us with a good excuse: If all this aggression and the dangers that go with it are in fact innate in us, we cannot hope to run counter to our very nature, can we? Many people thought World War I, in Europe, would last indefinitely and ruin all Europe. Yet the idea of a collective existence persisted, to be achieved on another, profounder, level than that of national unity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The Protestant Principle can be given a far wider scope than some consider. Not limited to the classical religious question of how sinful humans can be acceptable to a holy God, it can be understood to encompass human’s intellectual life as well, and thus all of human’s experiences. As the sinners are declared just in the sight of God, so the doubter is possessed of the truth even as one despairs of finding it, and so cultural life in general is subject both to critical negation and courageous affirmation. The war was a shattering experience to many, not only for its carnage and physical destruction but as evidence of the bankruptcy of the 19-th century humanism and the questionableness of the adequacy of autonomy as a sole guide. The chaotic situation in Germany, after the armistice, made people certain the Western civilization was indeed nearing the end of an era. The impending cultural breakdown was a momentous opportunity for creative social reconstruction, characterized by the New Testament term Kairos, signifying a historical moment into which eternity erupts, transforming the World into a new state of being. One is not so naïve as to think that socialism, in any forms, can approximate the Kingdom of God: The realization of the Kingdom of God can never become an immanent reality and the absolute can never be realized in space and time. Yet, in this period of reconstruction, theology should hold up the ideal of the Kingdom of God before the eyes of the builders. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

It is a warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. However, mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands. “And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when humans shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast you your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in Heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. However, woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all beings shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets,” reports Luke 6.20-26. Readers and students of the New Testament often find that it is not the refined argument of Pau or the mystical wisdom of John, but the simple sayings of Jesus, as recorded by the first three evangelists, which are the most difficult to interpret. The words of Jesus seem so clear and straightforward and adequate that it is hard to imagine that anybody could miss the meaning. However, when we are asked to express the meaning in our own words, we discover one level of meaning after another. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

We realize that words of Jesus which we have know since our earliest childhood are incomprehensible to us. And if we try to penetrate them, we are driven from one depth to another; we are never able to exhaust them. Nothing seems simpler, and yet nothing is more perplexing, than, for instance, the Lord’s prayer, the Parables, and the Beatitudes. We have heard the four Beatitudes and the four Woes as Luke reports them. Their meaning seems unmistakable. The poor, those who are hungry now, those who weep now, those who are isolated and insulted, are praised, congratulated, so to speak, because they can expect precisely the opposite of their present situation. And those who are exploiting others, those who are full, those who laugh, those who are unduly popular and respected, are pitied, because they must expect precisely that which is contrary. Two questions arise. What is promised and to whom is it promised? What is the kingdom which is to be owned by the poor, and who are the poor who shall own it? And who are the rich against who the Woes shall be directed, and what shall happen to them? St. Matthew tried to answer these questions. He said that the poor are the poor in spirit, and that those who hunger, hunger after righteousness. He said that those who weep, mourn for the state of the World. And to them is promised the kingdom of Heaven, the vision of the Divine Spirit, the comfort and mercy of the realm of God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Is Saint Matthew’s interpretation right? Or has Matthew, and have the official Christian Churches, following him, spiritualized the Beatitudes? Or, on the other hand, has Luke, and have the many sectarian and revolutionary movements, following him, distorted the Beatitudes from a materialistic point of view? Both assertions have been made and both are wrong. If we want the true answer, we must look at those to whom Jesus spoke. He spoke to two kinds of people. One kind lived wit their hearts turned toward the coming stage of the World. They were poorly adjusted to things as they were. They were suffering under the conditions of their lives. Many were disinherited, insecure, hungry, oppressed. There is no distinction made in the Beatitudes between spiritual and material want, and there is no distinction made between spiritual and material fulfillment. Those to whom Jesus spoke were in need of both. Neither the prophets nor Jesus spiritualized the message of the Kingdom. Nor did they understand it and interpret it to say that the Kingdom would come as the result of a merely material revolution. Christianity pronounces the unity of body and soul. The Beatitudes praise those who will be fulfilled in their whole being. However, the other kind of people to whom Jesus spoke were those to whom He promised the Woes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

They were unbroken in their relation to the present stage of the World. They lived with their hearts in things as they are. They were well-established in their lives; they enjoyed prestige, power, and security. Jesus threatened them spiritually and materially. They were bound to this eon, and they were to vanish with this eon. They had no treasure beyond it. The situation of the people of Galilee to whom Jesus spoke is still our situation. The Woes are promised today to all of us who are well off, respected, and secure, not simply because we have such security and respect, but if we are blind to the needs of others and not humble before God, it inevitably binds us, with almost irresistible power, to this eon, to things as they are. And the Beatitudes are promised today to all us who are without security and popularity, who are mourning in body and soul. And they are promised not simply because we lack so much, but because the very fact of our lacks and our sorrows may turn our hearts away from things as they are, toward the coming eon. The Beatitudes do not glorify those who are poor and in misery, individuals or classes, because they are poor. The Woes are not promised to those who are rich and secure, classes or individuals, because they are rich. If this were so, Jesus could not have promised to the poor the reversal of their situation. He praises the poor in so far as they live in two World, the present World and the World to come. And He threatens the haughty in so far as they live in one World alone. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

This brings a tremendous tension into our lives. We life in two orders, one of which is a reversal of the other. The coming order is always coming, shaking this order, fighting with it, conquering it and conquered by it. The coming order is always at hand. However, never say: “It is here! It is there!” One can never grasp it. However, one can be grasped by it. And whenever one is grasped by it, one is rich, even if one be poor in this order. One’s wealth is one’s participation in the coming order, it its battles, its victories, and defeats. One is blessed, one may rejoice and leap even when one is isolated and insulted, because one’s isolation belongs to this order, while one belongs to the order! One is blessed, while they who cast out one’s name are to be pitied. By their dread and despair, and by their hatred of him, they prove that the Woes Jesus has directed against them have already become real. They lose the one and only order they have; they disintegrate in body and spirit. Perhaps we are right to consider the catastrophe of our present World as a fulfillment of the Woes which Jesus directed against a rich, abundant, laughing, self-congratulating social order. However, if we believe this, we can also believe that those who have become poor and hungry and sorrowing and persecuted in this catastrophe are those in whom the other order is made manifest. They may betray it, but they are called first. Only through the paradox of the Beatitudes can we begin to understand our own life and the life of our World. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

The conformism that threatened Jesus most effectively and brought him to death was the religious conformism of his time. And the situation was and is not different in the church. For the Christian churches also belong to this eon, although they witness to the coming eon and represent the coming eon in time and space. They share in the corruption of this eon, its mixture of good and evil. And their history is a continuous witness to their corruption. Therefore, Saint Paul’s warning against being conformed is also valid for the church. However, is it possible, one may ask, to escape conformity if one belongs to the group that is unite by a common creed, by rituals, by ethical standards, by old traditions and regular acts of common devotion? Can you adhere to a church and not be conformed? Indeed, there were non-conformist churches. However, were they not non-conformist for only one historic moment, and then conformist themselves, like those from whom they separated? These are serious questions, especially for Protestants whose church came into existence through a protest against the conformity of the ruling church. I do not hesitate to state that one may have to resist being conformed even in the church community. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Certainly, such an act also involves a risk. One may be in error. However, it must be done. For it may represent the divine protest against everything human, even the highest forms of religion. A church in which this divine protest does not find a human voice through which it can speak has become conformed to this eon. Here we see what non-conformity ultimately is—the resistance to idolatry, to making ultimates of ourselves and our World, our civilization and our church. And this resistance is the most difficult thing demanded of a being. It is so difficult that the prophets in the Old and New Testament, and the Reformers, and the leaders of the struggle against idolatry in the history of religion as a whole, when called to fight the conformity to this eon, tried to escape this task. It is almost too difficult for human beings. It is not too difficult to become a critic and rebel. However, it is hard not to be conformed to anything, not even to oneself, and to pronounce the divine judgment against idolatry, not so much because the courageous act may lead to suffering and martyrdom, but because of the risk of failure. It is hard because something in our conscience, a feeling of guilt, tries to prevent us from becoming non-conformist. However, even this feeling of guilt we must take upon ourselves. One who risks and fails can be forgiven. One who never risks and never fails is a failure in one’s whole being. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

One is not forgiven because one does not feel that one needs forgiveness. Therefore, dare, to be not conformed to this eon, but transform it courageously first in yourselves, then in your World—in the spirit and the power of love. “That which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God. Wherefore, take heed, my beloved brethren, that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the devil,” reports Moroni 7.13-14. God, Who art the Author of our freedom and of our salvation, hear the voices of Thy supplaints, and grant that those whom Thou hast redeemed by the effusion of Thy Blood may both live by Thee, and enjoy perpetual safety in Thee, O Saviour of the World. Grant to us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that as we celebrate the mysteries of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, so at His coming we may be enable to rejoice with all His Saints; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessed Lord Jesus, no human mind could conceive or invent the gospel. Acting in eternal grace, thou art both its messenger and its message, lived out on Earth through infinite compassion, applying thy life to insult, injury, death, that I might be redeemed ransomed, freed. Blessed be thou, O Father, for contriving this way, Eternal thanks to thee, O Lamb of God, for opening this way, Praise everlasting to thee, O Holy Spirit, for applying this way to my heart. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Glorious Trinity, impress the gospel on my soul, until its virtue diffuses every faculty; let it be heard, acknowledged, professed, felt. Teach me to secure this mighty blessing; help me to give up every darling lust, to submit heart and life to its command, to have it in my will, controlling my affections, moulding my understandings; to adhere strictly to the rules of true religion, not departing from them in any instance, nor for any advantage in order to escape evil, inconvenience or danger. Take me to the cross to seek glory from its infamy; strip me of every pleasing pretence of righteousness by my own doings. O gracious redeemer, I have neglected thee too long, often crucified thee, crucified thee afresh by my impenitence, put thee to open shame. I thank thee for the patience that has borne with me so long, and for the grace that now makes me willing to be thine. O unite me to thyself with inseparable bonds, that nothing may ever draw me back from thee, my Lord, my Saviour. Lamb of God, Who takest away the sin of the World, lok upon us and have mercy upon us; Thou Who are Thyself both Victim and Priest, Thyself both Reward and Redeemer; keep safe from all evils those whom Thou has redeemed, O Saviour of the World. We give Thee thanks, O God the Father, Who hast delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of Thy Son; grant therefore, we pray Thee, that as by His death He has recalled us to life, He may raise up in His love to joys eternal. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19